AGENCY.GONE ?As the pitch for the Subway Sandwich business moves forward, agency.com took a bold step forward in an attempt to let Subway's management peek under its covers and watch how an agency pulls its pitch team together.It's a big gamble and likely a bigger mistake.In a nine-plus minute video posted on YouTube, the agency serves up nothing more than a lame comedy routine a bunch of teens could have come up with. Getting behind the counter, serving up sandwiches as sandwich artists, the pitch team makes the process appear simple minded and non-professional. It's high school all over again.The video itself proves to be boring, uneventful, complete with innuendos and insults. The management at Subway, in a smart move, made "no comment".The seeming lack of organization on the part of agency.com to put its best foot forward can only help its competition. Wow me with consumer insights and buzz, research, and marketing prowess. Tell me about my competition. Show me how to leverage the dynamic shift in consumer marketing channels. Give me examples of success in my category. And create brilliant communications that embody these principles.At the end of the day, agency.com did more to generate awareness of itself across tens of thousands of viewers. That's what they may have expected .... Ironically, it was attention drawn to a lousy execution.Here's the video if you can stand it for nine minutes ....be patient while it loads.

1 comment:

High school kids....that's exactly what I was thinking when watching it.

I agree with you, Paul. There's been a lot said about this. I made the following comments to a post on Adrants:

What Agency.com put together was sophomoric. It should make Subway, or any other client, frightened at the thought of having these guys responsible for managing any part of their brand's marketing communications.

Sadly, it appears this wasn't a joke. I wish it were. This appears to be how Agency.com (and probably quite a few others in our busines) actually work. Not only does that reflect poorly on Agency.com, it reflects poorly on our entire industry.

Authenticity can be very important in today's viral marketing world. Remember OK Go? They produced a video that showed them performing a rather weird dance routine. It was shot in someone's back yard. (They were rehearsing the dance routine for an upcoming show.) A girlfriend of one of the guys thought it was fun and she posted it online and emailed it to a few people. It went viral. OK Go's video succeeded because it was authentic and entertaining. It showed real people doing a foolish dance for the purpose of entertainment.

Agency.com's video was authentic, too. It also showed real people doing a foolish dance. But In contrast to OK Go's video, Agency.com's video wasn't purposely entertaining. These were authentic fools.